State, rancher teaming up to bring world-record fish to Texas

Updated 12:39 am, Monday, July 21, 2014

A Texas oral surgeon and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department are working on reeling in the big one, literally, in a partnership to bring the world record for largemouth bass to Texas.

The effort is part of the state's ShareLunker program, which encourages anglers to lend or donate any largemouth bass weighing more than 13 pounds to the state for spawning purposes.

Dr. Gary Schwarz signed a 15-year contract with the Parks and Wildlife Department that will allow the state to use his new private lake on his ranch in Zapata, called Jalisco, to provide bass with the best genetics, environment and nutrition for growing to a record-breaking size.

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Schwarz said that although the state record has not been approached in recent years, the work done on this lake might make Texas the place for anglers to come if they want to catch the proverbial “big one.”

He said some of the work done with another one of his projects, La Perla, allowed him to realize what a focused effort could do for the state. At La Perla, he put his research to practice and raised bass in a way he thought would produce the best results.

“Those bass went into a place prepared for them with forage out the wazoo and no other bass,” he said. “That's the magic of the initial startup. I believe that the reason for that has to do with habitat and nutrition.”

Schwarz said a conversation with professional angler Alton Jones gave him the idea for what he wants to be a lasting contribution to his home state.

Jones told Schwarz that combining fingerlings, or small fish, that came from the state through the ShareLunker program and Schwarz's acquired expertise in fish nutrition could accomplish something extraordinary.

“Alton made me realize that if I could get the state genetics expert to bring some of those fingerlings to La Perla Ranch, and if I combined my ideas on nutrition, that could be the answer to breaking another record,” Schwarz said. “He knew I was building the ultimate expression of what I had learned.”

Schwarz's dream ran into a problem. The state had come to a decision not to do contracts with private lakes, which meant that his idea of combining his knowledge and the state's resources appeared to have ended before it started.

But after meeting a few years ago with local officials, including the director of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's Freshwater Fishing Center, Allen Forshage, and showing Forshage the property, Schwarz convinced the agency that what he had was special. Even then, it did not come together until April.

“I had taken this featureless, barren mudhole and turned it into bass mecca,” Schwarz said. “It was chock full of nutritious things to eat because of the diversity in water depths and edge effect I had created in the main lakes where the bass lived.”

Forage ponds were possible thanks to Rio Grande irrigation rights he had bought along with the property. This allowed him to use water from the river and pump it into his forage ponds to then supplement the lakes, which were mostly composed of rainwater, with additional water and nutrition.

When it came time for Schwarz to agree to do business with the state, he was surprised at the length of the contract — 15 years. Forshage said this is the norm when it comes to this type of deal because it will take years to see results.

“All of our contract lakes where we're monitoring the max size are for 15 years because that's how long it takes for them to get at least that size,” Forshage said. “They can get there in as short as eight years, but the average lunker is 11 years old. We designed the length of the study to go beyond that.”

Schwarz will provide his expertise, and the state is providing the fish through the Operation World Record part of the ShareLunker program.

“He was willing to build the lake the way we wanted it built,” Forshage said. “He manages the lake. What we did is we stocked it with some of our OWR fish. He signed the contract and is going to follow our recommendations for the next 15 years.”

Schwarz agreed and said he was in it for more than just the money.

“I have state pride,” Schwarz said. “I've been a Texan all my life, and I'm a Texan first. How neat could it be to maybe make a difference? I'm doing it for the romance, for the feeling, for the artistic part of the opportunity for this state.”

This project will allow the state to control some of the variables that drastically affect the health of the bass population, including habitat and forage.

“As you get a large population, they tend to eliminate the forage base,” Forshage said. “He's giving us a research list that will eliminate that.”

State officials are using this to track whether the program is doing what they hope it will do — make bigger fish.